Text and photos by Peter Vankevich

Seeing birds such as Brown Pelicans flying over the waves or diving for fish, Royal terns with their bright orange bills often clutching a fish to take to its hatchlings or a Black Skimmer in late afternoon gracefully flying along the waterline to snatch its sustenance are images that make Ocracoke Island a special place.

One would think the Island should be an easy spot for birds to raise a family. But they have many challenges, especially for the beach nesters. Two hazards are also the same for nesting sea turtles — storm systems and predators.

But whereas sea turtle nests can withstand overwash if it is not sustained for an extended period, one major storm system can wipe out the beach bird nests. Depending on the time of the occurrence, they may or may not attempt to renest.

Resilience is a term that has often been applied to the residents of Ocracoke. It can also be applied to the beach nesting birds, according to Amy Thompson, the National Park Service’s lead biological technician for Ocracoke Island. Among her many responsibilities, she monitors the island’s nesting activities of birds and sea turtles.

“Absolutely. We definitely see renesters, especially if it’s earlier in the year. We’ve seen oystercatchers renest as many as three times. It is also something we observe daily — seeing these birds try to fight the odds when you get these weather events and then just out there continuing to incubate their eggs, despite some really harsh conditions.”

Although there have been other locations on the ocean side of the island over the past years, the principal bird nesting location on Ocracoke is the South Point. The extensive salt flat is prone to having the ocean’s waters pour onto the entire area and this year several storm systems along with extreme high tides and heavy rains did just that.

“The combined nests for Ocracoke’s South Point this year was 229, with the majority of the species being Least Terns and had 14 known fledglings,” Thompson said. It is possible that one Gull-billed Tern they were tracking fledged.

 “We ended up with three oystercatcher fledglings this year, which was very exciting, but overall, the 17 oystercatcher nests had a lot of failures that were due to some suspected predation and sustained heavy rains and overwash.”

In addition to ghost crabs that can snatch hatchlings, beach nesting birds on the Outer Banks are increasingly subject to predation by mammals: raccoons, mink, foxes, cats, opossums and coyotes.

“There was a single report of a coyote on Ocracoke filmed on a camera and also pawprints at the South Point,” according to Meaghan Johnson, chief of resource management and science for the Seashore. But on Hatteras Island and Cape Lookout there are many more that are impacting both birds and sea turtles, she said.

“We do have a full-time predator Management Specialist that’s helping us do trapping throughout the year, but we’re still seeing an increase in the coyote population which I think is typical because they’re very smart,” she said.

NPS has an agreement NC State University to do a coyote population study at both Seashores. “We may trap five coyotes and that may be good or bad depending on what the population is and right now, we just don’t know.”

Ocracoke’s migrating raptors
Gil and Jann Randell have been tracking migrating raptors — hawks, falcons, eagles, ospreys and vultures, from a dune north of the pony pasture for several years. This year they were not able to spend as much time tallying as they have in the past. Nevertheless, for the month of October with just a total of only 40 field hours, they counted a total of 387 birds that included 120 Merlin, 57 Peregrine Falcons and nine Bald Eagles. With such a small amount of time observing, these numbers are only a fraction of these birds of prey passing through.

Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge 
Again, bird nesting was a mixed success for the same two reasons.

“The late May-early June strong NE winds really knocked back least tern nesting, right around the time of our annual count window,” said Sarah Toner, Visitor Services Manager.

 “We actually delayed counting into June and still had a high ratio of fresh scrapes to active nests: 558 fresh scrapes to 120 active nests. Then, in early July we had Least Terns show up all over the place and start nesting in both established colonies and new locations.  These birds seemed to do very well with lots of chicks and fledglings.  Throughout the season we did see signs of coyote predation in multiple colonies.” Scrapes refers to making a shallow depression in the sand or on vegetation and is the first step to nest building.

A group of Black Skimmers appeared as if they were going to nest at New Inlet in June but after finding three scrapes, the birds vacated the area before ever laying eggs. “We had two series of nesting attempts at Oregon Inlet in late June and early July,” she said.  “The first nest losses were attributed to avian predation with gulls being the suspected culprit and the second round of losses were definitely coyote predation. 

“We had quite a few of our American Oystercatchers pairs break up and re-pair with new mates with five nesting attempts.  Our only successful fledging was a single chick at Oregon Inlet.” 

The one Piping Plover nest on the refuge was at Oregon Inlet with three eggs.  Either one egg was lost close to hatch or hatched, and the chick was quickly predated.  The other two eggs hatched, and the chicks made it to approximately 11 days old. The staff suspect the last chick was taken by a ghost crab. One of the parents had defensive wounds that look to be attributed to a ghost crab as well.

Whereas Ocracoke, Hatteras and Pea islands beach nester had their challenges, two nearby islands in the Pamlico Sound did better.

Big Foot Island
A dredge spoil island was created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the 1980s to clear shoaling in Big Foot Slough, a channel used by the sound ferries that go to Swan Quarter and Cedar Island, referred to as Big Foot Island, it has had some of the highest nesting numbers in the state for Royal Terns and Sandwich Terns. But it had been battered by storms in the last several years and by last year eroded down to a sliver. By 2022, there were only approximately 50 combined nests of these two terns species.

A dredging operation by USACE over the winter to clear shoaling in the channel placed 210,000 cubic yards of primarily sand onto the island. This replenishment resulted in a remarkable turnaround.

According to Carmen Johnson, a wildlife biologist with NC Wildlife Resource Commission, a survey of the island found nests of 6,256 Royal Terns, 1,012 Sandwich Terns, 21 Brown Pelicans, 19 Great Black-backed Gulls and one each Common Tern, Great Egret and Herring Gull nest. Brown Pelicans need vegetation for their nesting site. As the plant life returns, more pelicans should nest there.

Beacon Island
Beacon Island is located about two miles northwest of Portsmouth Island in the Pamlico Sound. It once measured 26 acres, but now is barely seven. Sitting low, it has been susceptible to storms that can cause high mortality for both eggs and hatchlings. This year was not an exception.

“The pelicans and egrets were hit hard by the inclement weather around Memorial Day Weekend, which caused the failure of many younger chicks that were too big to fit under the adults but not mature enough to thermoregulate in a windy downpour. Therefore, they died of hypothermia in the nest. However, both egrets and pelicans re-nested and were successful along with the older chicks that survived the nor’easter,” said Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina which owns the island. “Officially, we had 494 pairs of Brown Pelicans, 2 pairs of American Oystercatchers, 41 pairs of Great Egrets, and 2 pairs of Snowy Egrets.”

For many reasons, only a few nesting birds in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore are tracked by the NPS staff. These are the beach nesters,  American Oystercatchers and the colonial waterbirds, i.e., here that means Least, Common and Gull-billed Terns and Black Skimmers. Also tracked are Wilson’s and Piping Plovers, neither plover species produced any fledglings.

Other species are recorded by multiple observers using eBird and are added to the NC Bird Atlas, a five-year project begun in 2021. There is also a Birds of Ocracoke Facebook page administered by Heather Johnson that has lots of island bird photos. Many of these pics, especially by islander Karen Rhodes, are excellent.

A highlight of the fall Ocracoke birding was a Western Kingbird photographed at the Pony Pasture on Oct. 20.

So far, there have not been any reports of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), also known as bird and avian flu, in the region, but there have been recent outbreaks elsewhere. Last year, the Outer Banks had an outbreak in December that dissipated in January.

In the past couple of years, HPAI has caused devastation to many wild bird species and the domestic poultry and egg industry with millions of birds euthanized in order to contain the spread. The virus is now transmitting to mammals. For the first time ever, Brazil has reported nearly 1,000 seals and sea lions in its southern region have perished from an outbreak. It is also spreading in the Antarctic, with hundreds of elephant seals dead along with fur seals, Kelp Gulls and Brown Skua, according to a recent report in The Guardian. There have not been any reports of it reaching the remote penguin populations.

For something to look forward to: An Osprey nest platform was put in place in the Pamlico Sound just off the NCCAT campus. It will be interesting to see if a pair of them choose this prime real estate in the upcoming spring. In the meantime, it is a Belted Kingfisher’s favorite perch.